Wine in the Philippines

Inspired by all the great presentations that we saw a couple weeks ago, I was curious about wine from my family’s home country – the Philippines. This post is about the wine market in the Philippines and whether domestically produced wines have the potential to reach the world stage.

I had never heard of Filipino wine before, and I now know why – there’s close to none in the Philippines. Most of the wine produced in the Philippines are based on locally produced cros such as mangoes and rice. Grape-based wines are mostly imported from Australia and European countries. In 2012, there were reports that there were attempts to produce grapes, but those efforts failed due to unsuitable soil conditions and high temperatures native to the Philippines.

That said, several remote communities in the Philippines have wine making traditions that date back to the colonization of the Philippines by the Spanish in the 16^th century. Among the wines produced in the Philippines is the tuba – which is produced from coconut saps or nipa palms. There are super-local wines as well, but these are rarely commercialized and are typically drank in villages.

Wine in the Philippines is concentrated significantly in Metro Manila, where an estimated 70 percent of total wine sales take place. The majority of wine that is consumed in the Philippines is imported from the US, its leading supplier since 2009. The Philippines, in return, is the largest US wine market in Southeast Asia in terms of volumes – and growth is expected to continue. At least 20 million Filipinos now have sufficient income to purchase wine occasionally, and its citizens are becoming more affluent. Given the company’s robust economic recovery, we should expect the country to become a target for many international exporters in the near future.